NRO grant for post-doc Maaike Engels

For her proposel ‘Bridging the Gap: The Role of Teachers in the Transition from Primary to Secondary Education’ Maaike Engels, post-doc at the department of Sociology an NRO grant.

The grant, for promising researchers in education sciences who have recently received their PhD, enables them one to two-year stay at a Dutch research institute.

About the project:

The transition from primary to secondary education is an important but often difficult transition in students’ educational careers. Many early adolescents experience this transition as problematic as they have to navigate a new social environment, whereas at the same time school interest and motivation drops. To date, teachers’ role in this transition remains unknown. This project aims to investigate the transition from primary to secondary education and focuses on changes in teacher-student relationships (i.e., quality and quantity) in relation to students’ social and academic functioning. In doing so, this project addresses the need to identify factors fostering successful school transitions and yields insights in how schools can facilitate the transition from primary to secondary education.